Drinking straws held class A drug

Two drug dealers were jailed yesterday after detectives foiled an ingenious plot to smuggle crack cocaine inside hundreds of drinking straws stuffed into the corrugated folds of a cardboard box.

At Kingston-upon-Thames crown court Phillip Cummings, 37, of Leyton, east London, received a six-year sentence and 50-year-old Kenneth Noakes, from Stoke Newington, north London, five years. Both men had admitted trying to possess Class A drugs with intent to supply.

Following intelligence leads, police intercepted a parcel from Jamaica at Stansted airport on September 29 last year. The cardboard box was filled with cheap pottery and hidden in its sides were 600 straws containing almost a kilo (2.2lb) of crack, which was worth £71,000 on the street.

The drug had been so painstakingly broken down and inserted in the straws it took a forensic scientist 22 hours to extract it all.

On October 6, the parcel was delivered to Noakes at premises in Cato Road, Clapham, south London. He and Cummings were then arrested.

The court case is the first for London's "middle market drugs unit", a 70-strong team from Scotland Yard, Customs, City of London police, and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, whose remit is to clamp down on those in the middle ranks of the drugs trade, a section previously neglected with law enforcers focusing on street dealers and international smugglers.

Detective Superintendent Steven Dann, who leads the team, said yesterday: "It sends a strong message to all those involved in drugs that we will catch them no matter how sophisticated they think they are, and that the courts will deal with them severely."

He said the case was unusual for the way the drug was hidden in the straws; it was also more common for smugglers to bring pure cocaine into the UK for conversion into three or four times as much crack.

"It certainly took a lot of effort to stuff the crack into the straws. But we've since seen a similar method in Birmingham, where there have been three arrests."

In the past two months, since its official launch, "middle market" has arrested 43 people, of whom 40 have been charged, and the team has also seized 104kg (16st) of cocaine and 18kg of heroin - an estimated 267,000 street deals - as well as 39kg of amphetamines and 58kg of cannabis.